This board has become a misery to read. I can’t post in the Key Tweets thread, and I am happy about that, because based on the posts in that thread, you would think the UConn athletic program was about to be overrun by an invading barbarian horde.
One of two things are going to happen. Either the Big 12 will extend an offer, or it won't. Any Big 12 offer is likely going to come with demands for more spending, will have an extended earn-in, and if reports about FoxSports not wanting to fund it are true, will be for less revenue than the other members of the league. The Big 12, like every other league, is on its last massive linear TV contract, as we can see by the pushback TV partners for both the Big 12 and Big 10 are having about adding new members. They are all tapped out, and the stock market is telling all of them it is time to be profitable. It would be nice to get some of that guaranteed TV money before it is gone forever, but that ship has mostly sailed already.
If the doomsayers are correct, and this offer is do or die for UConn because college sports are consolidating into a P2, then getting an offer into a conference that won't survive and whose earn-in would last almost to the end of the conference's current TV contract is not going to do us much good. If fans only want to watch 10 programs or so play college athletics, eventually those 10 programs are going to get all the revenue anyway. UConn's athletic program is already dead.
We are in the early days of a realignment driven by streaming, NIL and the Transfer Portal. An invitation to the Big 12 is not a life raft, and getting left out is not a death sentence. If being a UConn fan makes you so upset, go root for Michigan or Alabama. It will be less stressful.
Make sure to leave the last national championship on the table on your way out.